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Once had put a full stop behind final sentence of my last blog post, my inner critic and I set off on our evening walk. Ambling beneath the fresh greenery of the trees, where the wind played with the sun’s light to the song of the birds, some of my thoughts (though by no means all of them) crept back to my desk, to the organic geometry of the yogi vitruvianus,inspired by Leonardo da Vinci.

“Why,” I wondered – or rather: they wondered, “do humans feel the need to measure themselves by the abstract form(ula)s of geometry and mathematics?” “Because,” one of them replies rolling his eyes, “they were presented to us by none other than Plato as the absolute ideal and highest truth of life’s imperfect formations (Phaedrus 247d–248b).” “In contrast to Patañjali’s kaivalya, the total separation from all forms of prakṛti, concrete and abstract (Yogasūtra 4.34),” another thought snaps back at the know-it-all, “Plato’s ideal can hardly be described as absolute,” and adds: “What could be truer than pure consciousness, than puruṣa?” Checking his nails, my Platonist shrugs: “I have no idea what that could even mean,” he says. “Perfect puruṣa!” says the other, triumphantly.

Meanwhile, the inevitable in(ter)fluence of streams of consciousness has carried the concept of puruṣa into my thoughts in the park. However, whilst the discussion over there is focussing on the abstraction of the abstract, rather different texts and contexts are unfolding over here: The great Puruṣa-Sūkta of the Ṛg-Veda, for example, written some 3500 years ago, which speaks of puruṣa’s primordial sacrifice – here it is still, in accordance with the literal meaning of the word, the first cosmic being or person – through which the gods bring the world into being:

The moon was born from his mind; from his eye the sun was born. Indra and Agni came from his mouth, and from his vital breath the Wind as born.

(10.90.12)

Far removed from the supernatural or transcendent spheres of Plato and Patañjali, this puruṣa is situated in the world – indeed: he is the world, he is the stars, he is the universe. As brahman, puruṣa reappears in the later Upaniṣads where he, in accordance with the verbal root √bṛh-, becomes the expansive principle that underlies and permeates everything that exists (Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad 2.1–10b). Ātman, whose grammatical self-reference and literal corporeality initially suggest a limitation of its nature, is simultaneously called upon to realise itself as brahman by means of meditation (Aitareya Upaniṣad 3.1–3) – not in an abstract-transcendent sense, but in a sense entirely immanent to the world: Thus, the Chāndogya Upaniṣad links the five movements of the human body’s breath to the five senses, which, in turn, and as we encountered in the Puruṣa-Sūkta of the Ṛg-Veda, are connected with the elements and celestial bodies (2.1.1–5). Yet it is the Markaṇḍeya Purāṇa that describes the awakening of consciousness as a systematized meditative process, which the yogi moves through via his sensory perception of the elements earth, water, fire, air and ether:

One should hold seven subtle concentrations in the head, starting with the earth.
The Yogi should hold to the earth and enter its subtle quality.

[The Yogi] thinks on its expansive nature and moves beyond its fragrance.
Likewise in regard to the subtle flavor in water and the form [revealed by] fire.

This concentration extends simultaneously to the touch of the wind.
In the subtle activity of the sky, one moves beyond sound.

Thus one enters all of the elements of the mind through the mind.
Carrying this mental concentration, the subtle mind is born.

(40.17–20)

“Here,” I find my self thinking, “the ideal of humanity is measured not by the abstract forms or transcendent realms of consciousness, but by the manifest and living reality of the world as a whole,” and I realise that this idea resonates with me not only intellectually, but also somatically. “That is surprising, though,” a passing thought notes, and draws my attention to the world-renouncing, body-disciplining, inward-looking yogi who runs – or rather: sits – like a leitmotif through texts and traditions, and whose interest in the elements lies, at best, in overcoming and mastering them. “Ultimately, however, his goal is mokṣa,” my thought observes, “the final liberation from the cycle of rebirths into this world: He transcends the elements, as the Purāṇa describes.” I agree with my thought’s thought. Nevertheless: If mokṣa also means liberation from the confines of the me and mine, is a practice that allows us to become more open and permeable not a way to move towards this goal within our lives, within this world? My thoughts are still. Within me, only the leaves of the trees and the light of the setting sun are moving to the evening song of the birds.

Chapple, Christopher Key. Living Landscapes: Meditations on the Five Elements in Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain Yogas. State University of New York, 2020.

Doniger, Wendy. The Rig Veda: An Anthology. Penguin Classics, 1981.

Leonardo da Vinci’s drawing The Vitruvian Man (1498) is a paradox par excellence:
As one of the most famous works in art history, it is at once a testament to a historical view of humanity that, in our age of self-optimisation and self-quantification, could hardly be more relevant; it is the representation of an apparent deciphering of the sum and substance of humanity whilst simultaneously laying bare its inscrutability; it reciprocally reflects art and mathematics, the concrete with the abstract, the finite with eternity. And although the original is only exhibited every five years or so, it is nonetheless omnipresent in our everyday lives: We continuously encounter the Vitruvian Man on our Instagram-feeds, on health insurance cards, on Italian one-Euro coins – and in our Ashtanga practice.

But first, let’s take a brief look at the composition and concept behind this masterpiece: The double-stanced figure of an athletic man is situated at the centre of the picture. His outstretched limbs touch both a circle and a square, which frame his form. His navel constitutes the centre of both the human and geometric shapes. So far, so good – but: so what? What is the point of this geometric anthropology, which finds its continuation in the meticulous proportions of his body’s parts? Its point is nothing less than to portray man as the embodiment of the eternal geometry of the universe, as the microcosmic corpus of the macrocosmic order.

What might, in theory, sound quite compelling, soon proved to be an impossibility in practice: The Roman architect Vitruvius (c. 80 BC–15 AD), creator and namesake of the Vitruvianus, did not leave behind even a trace of a drawing of his homo bene figuratus, his well-proportioned human. The brilliant minds of the Renaissance – artists, architects, engineers – blunted their quills trying to sketch him, yet their designs never progressed beyond a collection of distorted homunculi. Finally, it was Leonardo – who else? – who succeeded in squaring the circle by deviating in a few details from Vitruvius’ specifications and incorporating his own mathematical, anatomical and aesthetic insights.

Returning to the practice of Ashtanga, we encounter a synthesized Virtruvianus most frequently within or between the standing postures following the Sun Salutations: between the trikoṇāsanas and the pārśva koṇāsanas, between two of the four pādottānāsanas, in the transition of pārśvottānāsana, and between the āsanas and samasthitiḥ. With view to the geometric leitmotif of this standing sequence, but also beyond it, at least two possibilities of practice can be derived from the ‘vitruvian-āsana’:

1. Like Virtuvius’ devoted Renaissance scholars, the practitioner attempts to conform to an abstract and/or external form in order to embody a supposed ideal. A mere glance at the different body sizes, proportions and potentials that we encounter in our shared practice suffices to reveal this to be physiological nonsense. That such an idea can also become politically dangerous was proven by the fascist appropriation of a measurable human ideal – cf. Benito Mussolini’s Leonardo exhibition in Milan in 1939.
2. The practitioner explores the harmonious interplay of forms and proportions within their own body. Here, too, the observation of no more than two practitioners reveals that each āsana takes on a different form in each person, and that even a single āsana inevitably changes over the course of a single person’s practice, both internally and externally. Like Leonardo da Vinci, we would therefore do well to test abstract and/or traditional theories in practice, to question them and, where necessary, to adapt them. Unless we decide to practise Homunculus Yoga, the measure of our practice cannot be compass and ruler, but the experiences and insights of each and every practitioner.

This seems to be a good place to pause – not least because the sun, the birds and the evening air are calling me outside ever more insistently. Yet, as so often happens at this very moment of writing, my inner critic is raising his hand to point out that I cannot possibly intend to conclude that humankind should regard itself as the measure of its own – or, at worst, of all – things. Of course not, I reply: It’s only logical that proportions can never arise solely from within themselves. Naturally, the person who practises yoga, who lives his or her life, must find their grounding within the physical and mental conditions given to them. Yet this person is always embedded within larger contexts: social and political, cultural and religious, abstract and concrete. This is precisely what Leonardo’s Vitruvianus symbolises: It is only through our own relationship with ourselves and with the whole that we will find our perfect posture as human beings. What more can there be to achieve in yoga? My inner critic seems, for the time being, to be appeased. Together we get up from my desk and stroll out into the evening sun.

Da Vinci, Leonardo: Uomo vitruviano. 1498, Gallerie dell’Accademia di Venezia, Venice.

prologue

And | And is no word with which to begin a sentence: This was writing rule no. 1 as per my first-year primary school teacher. It was superseded only by rule no. 2: No sentence ever ends with and. She certainly had a preference for paradoxes, did Mrs. B. It was only logical, then, that her advance against the most common conjunction of the English language did not begin and end with the beginning and end. Slowly but surely she replaced the scrawly ands of our meandering sentences with other connecting words – if, so, but, or and because – adding dimensions of causality, contrast and contingency to our writing and, in consequence, to our thinking.

Consciousness | For all her founded efforts, and mine, the ur-conjunction has prevailed at the hub and heart of the way in which I understand the world. The American psychologist William James, who, in his Principles of Psychology (1890), first conceptualized the stream of consciousness that gurgles and gushes through our mind, may have explained this by the very nature of consciousness: “No one ever had a simple sensation by itself,” he writes with view to his colleagues’ apparent misconception that impressions, thoughts, feelings could exist and be examined per se. “Consciousness, from our natal day, is of a teeming multiplicity of objects and relations, and that which we call simple sensations are results of discriminative attention, pushed often to a very high degree” (224). Those of us who have ever tried to keep our mind fixed on one object over a prolonged period of time will know this all too well.

Life | Life, I’ll venture to say, is no different: From the moment I wake, it, too, presents itself as a dynamic profusion of phenomena with varying degrees of interconnection: some are naturally conjoined (sunrise and birdsong), some by disposition and/or dependence (waking up and coffee), some quite arbitrarily (yoga and Max Richter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights). Each of these examples could be extended ad infinitum were I to let my primal perception of the world expand into the mysterious nexus of life. “Everything is only connected by ‘and’ and ‘and’,” wrote the American poet Elizabeth Bishop in her 1948 poem “Over 2,000 Illustrations and a Complete Concordance”, not without some indignation – a sentiment which Mrs. B, looking up from one of my early writing attempts, would have readily shared.

Beginning & End | Had the word polysyndeton been part of my first-form vocabulary, I may have made my case that the “many bindings” of and had no lesser precedent than the biblical Genesis story, here in its King James translation: “And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day” (Gen 1:3–5). So much for and and beginnings. So much for and and ends, one might argue with view to God’s polysyndetic destruction of the world with Noah’s flood (Gen 7:22–24). So much for and and the order of things, which is no less than the divine order of things, whose invocatory, rapturous, awe-inspiring effect lie in the rhythmic repetition of the simple word and.

Pure Connection | And yoga? Yoga, too, begins with an and of sorts: “atha yogānuśāsanam: Now, further instructions on yoga” (YS 1.1). While most popular renditions of the sūtra pass over the particle anu– expressing ‘after’ or ‘alongside’, James Mallinson and Mark Singleton’s translation of anu– as “further” makes quite clear that Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtra, dated to the 4^th century CE, does not proceed ab ovo, golden or otherwise – after all, where to locate its aureal hen? Instead, it presents itself as a compendium of many earlier influences and teachings on yoga found, for example, in the Mahābhārata and the Upaniṣads, in Jain and Buddhist sources, and, of course, in Sāṃkhya philosophy. Does the mere addendum of traditions, then, amount to the and of yoga? Not quite. More than simply stringing together the philosophies and practices that have formed and transformed the tradition(s) of yoga, and establishes a relationship between them, albeit one that, in contrast to other conjunctions such as when, where or since does not immediately define that relationship in terms of time, space or rationale. “‘And’ does none of these things,” the American writer Kathryn Schulz notes in her memoir Lost & Found (2022), “It is a connection made of nothing but connection” (191). And it is precisely this uncurated association of two or more things that and brings into relationship which defines the potential – and the potential pitfalls – of and in relation to yoga: “It doesn’t even matter if they have no intrinsic link at all,” Schulz writes, “because the effect of joining them with ‘and’ is to create one” (193).

Yoga’s Joinings | The history of yoga is full of such creative joinings. Patañjali, rather conventionally, quietly connects ideas found in other śramaṇa traditions in his own teachings on renunciation. Haṭha-yoga, more surprisingly, connects ascetic practices aimed at purging the body with the Tantric idea of the body as an instrument for liberation and abode of the divine. Quite unforeseeable, certainly in a pre-colonial world, are the connections established between Scandinavian gymnastics and harmonialist mind-body practices and haṭha-yoga, between Western occultism and (Neo-)Vedanta and Christianity and – yes, reader: Patañjali in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. Utterly mysterious, at least to me: The connection between goats and yoga de nos jours. Connections, and connections, and connections from yoga’s continued beginning through its multiplex middle to its open end.

Ca | All of these joinings might give rise to the short-circuited argument that yoga, derived from the verbal root √yuj meaning ‘to join’, ‘to bind’, ‘to concentrate’, is per definition an idea and a pursuit that unites or, at the very least, couples two erroneously disarticulated entities into a harmonious, prelapsarian whole. Yes and no. While this may be true for haṭha-yoga practices from the medieval era onwards, the classical yoga of Patañjali declares with uncompromising clarity that yoga is union’s absolute opposite: It is kaivalya, perfect isolation. Before exploring this further, it may be worthwhile taking a look at a conjunction which, unlike its English counterpart, is able to hold its different, even contradictory facets of meaning in a single syllable: the Sanskrit word च or ca, ‘and’. According to Sir Monier-Williams’ Sanskrit-English Dictionary (1899), ca is able to denote “and, both, also” and “but, on the other hand, nevertheless”; it can equal “eva-, even, indeed, certainly” and sometimes “ced-, if”; it may be used for “vā-, either, or” as well as its negative, “neither, nor” – in short: ca comprises both conjunction and disjunction, certainty and condition, inclusion and exclusion. And does it end there? Of course not! As the British lexicographer notes, “with lexicographers ca– may imply a reference to certain other words which are not expressed.”

Patañjali: Disjunction | For the purposes of this short essay, the above definitions are more than sufficient. They account for the disjunctive impetus of Patañjali’s method, whose sole objective behind divorcing the body from corporeality and the breath from breathing and the mind from thinking is the ultimate severance of prakṛti, the phenomenal world, from puruṣa, pure and perfect consciousness by means of viveka-khyāti, discriminative discernment between the two. Why, one might reasonably ask, is this so? To break free from saṃsāra, the self-reinforcing loop of karma, action and kāma, desire that keeps us trapped in a vicious cycle of rebirths. The logical way out is, well, out: to detach from desire, to detach from action, to detach from the world and, ultimately, from oneself. And lest the flicker of a doubt should remain, the legendary author states: “By removal of ignorance, conjunction [saṁyoga] is removed. This is the absolute freedom [kaivalya] of the seer [who is puruṣa]” (YS 2.25). In alignment with Sāṃkhya’s dualistic philosophy, saṁyoga, conjunction is suffering; kaivalya, isolation is liberation. It is a matter of ca as either-or.

Haṭhayoga: Conjunction | At the same time – albeit historically almost a millennium later –, texts on the physical practices of haṭha-yoga, such as the 14^th-century Yogabīja, emphasize the very opposite. Responding to her question on the whats and the whys and the hows of yoga, Śiva tells Devī that the union of apāna and prāṇa, the union of the sun and the moon, the union of the individual soul and the supreme, “and in the same way the union [saṁyoga!] of all dualities, is called yoga” (89–90). Ca and ca and ca. Influenced by the non-dual philosophies of Tantra and Advaita Vedanta, both of which continued to thrive after Sāṃkhya’s decline from 10^th century onwards, haṭha-yoga incorporated the process of integrative transformation and transcendence that became the vanishing point of non-dual world-views into its practices. Yet even in difference, connections persisted. Ca – indeed, the ultimate goal remained the same: Mastery over the body, senses and mind to overcome the principles of the material world and attain mokṣa, liberation from the cycle of reincarnation into mundane existence.

Haṭhayoga: Both-And | What, then, of yoga and life? Within a worldview whose focus ultimately lay beyond the world: not much. Although the possibility of jīvanmukti begins to be pencilled into the margins of haṭha-yoga texts, they remain rather sketchy about how such a liberation-in-life might manifest. While the liberated yogi portrayed in the Haṭhapradīpikā distinguishes himself by a cadaverous state beyond the senses and the self (4.109), he may, as described by the Dattātreyayogaśāstra, “wander about the worlds endowed with the power to become infinintesimal and so forth” (128), or, according to the Śivasaṃhitā, “liv[e] in a house with children and a wife” and even – brace yourself, Ashtangi: “have fun” (5.260). So long as all attachments have been abandoned, life in liberation, free from karmic entanglements, is possible. While the fundamental logic of liberation remains one of ca as either-or, it paradoxically becomes the foundation of a state of yoga in which ca can be both-and.

Bhagavad Gītā: Condition | This, of course, is the Bhagavad Gītā’s original argument, as presented by Kṛṣṇa to Arjuna on the cusp of the great battle that is at the centre of the Mahābhārata epos. Aware that the logic of war is destruction and the logic of karma is suffering, Arjuna finds himself caught in a double bind of sorts, in which a refusal to fight would be a refusal to fulfil his dharma, his duty as the warrior that he is, while to engage in war would be to engage ever more strongly in the cycle of karma. Kṛṣṇa, with divine dexterity, turns Arjuna’s either-or-conundrum into a both-and-resolution: “Your concern should be with action, / never with an action’s fruits; / these should never motivate you, / nor attachment to inaction” (2.47). So long as Arjuna divorces karma from kāma, as resounding as their connection might be, “the wise ones yoked to a higher mind / are freed from the bonds of rebirth” (2.51). Over two thousand years later, this conditional aspect of yoga’s ca still resonates strongly in Rudyard Kipling’s suitably titled poem “If—” (1895).

Modern Yoga: Connection & Conflation | So much – or rather, so little on yoga’s yesterdays, so many of which this conjunctive essay has had to leave by the wayside, so many more of which, in keeping with Sir Monier-Williams’ apropos about ca’s silent references, we do not (yet) know about. What, then, of yoga’s todays and tomorrows? The story that begins to unfold with modernity’s dynamics of colonization and globalization is one in which the complex of yoga traditions connects and combines with philosophies and practices from Europe and Scandinavia and the United States of America, conjoining, as I briefly mentioned above, men’s calisthenic routines with women’s harmonialist gymnastics with indigenous martial art practices with the methods and findings of modern science that were employed to attest yoga’s unique potency and healing potential, while anglophone occultists and mesmerists and pseudo-masters of manifestation were trying, with their own esoteric frameworks and formulae, to prove much the same thing. It is a story in which the English-educated Indian Hindu monk Vivekananda (1863–1902) – who, rather by chance, found himself speaking at the Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893 and, in consequence, at the nexus of many current ideas influencing and being influenced by yoga –, who conjoined the dualistic philosophy of Patañjali with the non-dual philosophy Advaita Vedanta with mesmerist ideas about an underlying force field, which he called prāṇa, with a Christian desideratum for experiential insights into God’s eternal and borderless truth. It is a story that continues along the way westward paved by Vivekananda, and others, now travelled by the gurus of modern postural yoga like B. K. S. Iyengar (1918–2014) and Patthabi Jois (1915–2009), who conjoined their highly elaborate systems of physical practice with Patañjali’s teachings on restraining all movement within a single, straightforward sentence: „I teach … Ashtanga Yoga, the original method given in Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtra” (Jois). Ca, it seems, became a connection to the point of conflation until it finally fell by the wayside altogether.

Ending & Beginning | This could be the end of our exploration – were it not for the intrinsic continuity of our ur-conjunction that finds its most compelling expression in the symbol for and, the ampersand: &, which, until some two hundred years ago, constituted the last character of the Latin alphabet: X, Y, Z, &. If Aristotle, writing his Poetics around 335 BCE, maintained that “a whole is that which has a beginning and a middle and an end” (7.1450b), and is the single syllable that cracks this neat triad of completion, as the prolific profusion of our consciousness and the multidimensional connections of our lives and the divine complexity of the world make abundantly clear. And thus, we arrive where we started – ish. Not in Mrs. B’s English lesson, though still, pen-on-paper, conversing with and. Not immersed in the polysyndetic nexus of categoric conjunction, but aware of the nuance ca holds within the connections we find in and between yoga’s traditions. Not, therefore, stepping into the pitfall of collapsing one philosophy or practice (Patañjali’s aṣṭāṅga-yoga) with another (Jois’ Ashtanga Yoga) or collocating two rather alien things (goats and yoga), but maintaining the space that and has created between them.

The Space of And | And is the space in which joining and yoking occurs, the space in which the formation of relations takes place, the space in which reflection and discussion unfold. How, if not through the space opened by and, are we to see connections and distinctions, hold ambiguities and ambivalences, maintain our traditions and be open to change? Where would we end up, if we did not hold open the space for evolution and transformation? I hear your response, reader: kaivalya. I shall leave it to your astute judgement whether to see Patañjali’s abode of liberation as a heaven, which the Talking Heads besang as “a place where nothing ever happens,” or a hell, which T. S. Eliot allegedly described as “a place where nothing connects with nothing”. More immediately important, at least to me, seems to be what lies between both: life – and life, as the American novelist Philip Roth famously expressed in The Counterlife (1986), “Life is and” (309). Life is the space of transformation which we inhabit, the space in which transformation takes places. Life is transformation and such connects and conjoins with yoga “for Yoga is the coming-into-being, / as well as the ceasing-to-be,” (6.11) as the Kaṭha Upaniṣad states in the earliest description of yoga that we are aware of. Yoga, like life, is and, and as such is relation, and as such is responsibility, for ourselves and each other and the more-than-human world as we all continue to come into being and to cease to be.

Bishop, Elizabeth. “Over 2,000 Illustrations and a Complete Concordance.” North & South – A Cold Spring. Houghton Mifflin Company, 1955.

Bryant, Edwin F. The Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali. North Point Press, 2009.

“Ca, ind.” Monier-Williams Sanskrit-English Dictionary, 1899, https://sanskritdictionary.com/ca/77625/1. Accessed 22 August 2026.

James, William. Principles of Psychology. Henry Holt and Company, 1890. 2 vols.

Jois, K. Patthabi. “An Interview with K Pattabhi Jois: Practice Makes Perfect.” Interview by Sandra Anderson. Yoga + Joyful Living Magazine, 1994, https://harmonyslater.com/interview-pattabhi-jois.

Kipling, Rudyard. “If—.” Rewards and Fairies. Macmillan and Co., 1910.

Mallinson, James, and Mark Singleton. Roots of Yoga. Penguin Books, 2017.

Roth, Philip. The Counterlife. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1986.

Schulz, Kathryn. Lost & Found: A Memoir. Random House, 2022.

Talking Heads. “Heaven.” Fear of Music, Warner, 1979.

The Bhagavad Gita. Translated by Gavin Flood and Charles Martin. W. W. Norton, 2012.

The Dattātreyayogaśāstra. Edited and translated by James Mallinson, École Française d’Extrême-Orient, 2024. Haṭha Yoga Series 5.

“The Kaṭha Upaniṣad.” Upaniṣads. Edited and translated by Patrick Olivelle. Oxford University Press, 1996, pp. 231–247.

The Śivasaṃhitā. Edited and translated by James Mallinson, YogaVidya.com, 2017.

Once upon a time, a Buddhist monk was alone in a temple. He threw himself to the floor, beat his chest vigorously and muttered: “I am nothing, I am nothing, I am nothing…”

Soon after, a novice entered the temple. He looked around, spotted the monk and knelt down beside him. Together with the monk, he murmured: “I am nothing, I am nothing, I am nothing…” Suddenly, the caretaker arrived to sweep the temple floor. When he saw the two men kneeling, he, too, knelt down and spoke in unison with the other two: “I am nothing, I am nothing, I am nothing…” The monk nudged the novice and remarked with indignance: “Well, well, well – look at who fancies himself as a nothing.”

The moral of the story? Nothing protects you – or rather: does not protect you – from the enticements of rank and status!

(Der Philosophie-Kalender 2025, 27.02.2025)

It is said that in yoga (and particularly in Ashtanga), there are those who feel the need to prove something through their practice: to themselves, to their teacher, to the other practitioners. It is also said that in yoga (particularly in Ashtanga) there are those who sometimes eye those who are already a little further along in their practice – doing drop-backs, gliding through their vinyāsas, practising the Third and Fourth Series – with a certain sense of envy. It is also said that in yoga (particularly in Ashtanga) there are people, both practitioners and teachers, who, quite en passant, will not fail to mention to others – practitioners and teachers alike – where they have practised, with whom, for how long, and what levels of qualification, authorisation, certification (also: injuries) they have accumulated over time.

So they say. What do we know about such things…

So far, so human. And yet: Shouldn’t it be precisely those members of our mundane species who devote their lives, in whole or in part, or even just for a few hours at the end of a long week, to a practice – yoga, for example – in which the focus is not on performance, results and comparisons, but on insight, acceptance and authenticity, who should distance themselves from such competitive struggles and posturing? Of course! Is the fact that, at times, this is not always the case an indication that yoga is not effective? Of course not! Quite the contrary: Like a magnifying glass – Richard Freeman would say: like a mirror – the practice of yoga clearly reveals to us the patterns of thought and behaviour that shape our perspective on ourselves and others both consciously and unconsciously – even as we firmly believe that we recognised and moved on from them long ago.

Here’s an anecdote from my own practice:

In the summer of 2025, I had the great fortune of being able to take part in a Teacher Intensive with Richard Freeman and Mary Taylor, alongside 50 marvellous practitioners from all over the world. Throughout the four weeks of the course, I did my morning practice next to an exceptionally friendly Norwegian who was diligently working on the Fourth Series of Ashtanga, all the while that I was trying to find my way back into the Second Series. “Perfectly fine!” I told myself, “She’s doing her thing and I’m doing mine, each to their own. I completely appreciate her practice and fully accept where I am with mine. And yet – it you’ll permit a quite aside: Aren’t my āsanas much more integrated? Doesn’t my breath flow much deeper? Am I not, in my modest contentment with the first two series, actually more advanced than those who feel the need to master the Advanced Series?” And thus comparative and competitive thinking had swiftly crept into my practice via the back roads of supposed acceptance and serenity: If I couldn’t keep up in flexibility and strength, then surely I could surpass her in attention, breathing and intention!

Chögyam Trungpa (1939–87), Tibetan Buddhist master and founder of the Shambhala Centres in North America and Europe, addressed the pitfalls and traps of spiritual practices in a number of his talks and discussions during the 1970s, describing them in a book of the same title as ‘spiritual materialism’. In it, he points out that the “ego can convert anything to its own use, even spirituality” (p. 13). How so? When teachings and practices are regarded as something that exists outside of us – as an ideal that we construct with the help of certain texts, images and/or role models, which we proceed to emulate, to measure ourselves against, and to compare ourselves to others with. Thus, the practice quickly turns into a performance: “If our teacher speaks of renunciation of the ego, we attempt to mimic renunciation of ego” (id.). To what end? To see ourselves confirmed in the belief that we are completely free of ego – and thus superior to our poor, ego-bound fellow human beings. The tragicomic aspect of this is that, whilst we genuinely believe ourselves to be more authentic, empathetic and present, we are actually becoming ever-more entangled in our rather cunning egos.

This, too, is very much a part of human nature – and thus, in a certain sense, very much true to who we are. The crux of the matter is to recognise this aspect of our nature, to acknowledge it, and to approach it with insight and humour. It may then not only become clear who, in the case of our Buddhist sangha from the beginning of this text, is the one merely imagining himself to be nothing; it might also become possible for us to move from arrogance to humility, from illusion to reality and – in the specific context of yoga – from the poses to the āsanas, from a performance to practice.

“Der Mönch und das Nichts.” Der Philosophie-Kalender 2025. 27.02.2025. Harenberg Verlag, 2024.
(Translated by the author)

Trungpa, Chogyam. Cutting through Spiritual Materialism. Shambhala Publications, 2002.